Anyone familiar with IM residencies in SF/Bay area?

7+ Year Member

I am looking into the different internal medicine residency programs in the San Francisco/Bay area. Does anybody have any input into which ones are good in terms of work hours, atmosphere, learning, fellowships etc....I visited the scutwork.com site, but there is not much feedback about programs in that area. Any information is appreciated.
Thanks,
Dani

7+ Year Member

Being from the midwest, I'm not familiar with anything in San Fran. That said, I am familiar with internet resources, and I've found some other rankings of the SF programs that you may not have seen collected through the AMSA site.

7+ Year Member

Thanks Future GI Guy...I'll look into that site. Task: it was a tough decision, but I finally realized that I would like to use my head more than my hands. OB/GYN is a surgical specialty and there are a lot of gyn surgeries done by OB/GYN. The most rewarding aspect of this specialty for me is Obstetrics, but unfortunately, that is the most unpredictable in terms of schedule. I don't want to be like a lot of the ob/gyn residents and count how many years go until I can drop my OB practice and only do gyn because of hours. The people I met in OB/GYN were somewhere between medicine and surgery in abrasiveness - which was surprising to me. The residencies are long and hard, and attendings work just as hard. According to Iserson's book, the most hours from any specialty. Medicine is appealing to me because of its academic and cerebral approach to multivariate problems. Plus, residencies are much easier than in OB/GYN and when you finish you have quite a lot of options. Lastly, I will know all of medicine, not just what OB/GYN limits me to. I see how OB/GYN residents fear the USMLE III a lot more than medicine interns. I decided I don't want to be like them. Feel free to email me personally for more info.
Lastly, the above is solely my opinion based on what I saw at my rotation, so don't necessarily go only by what I say.
Dani

7+ Year Member

Thanks for your response. I was just asking because I have a soon to be 4th year friend who is in a similar dilemma. Given that I'm an IM resident (and based on my previous posts <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> ), I'm more than a little biased. But another opinion is gonna be valuable to her thought process. She really likes procedures and the OR but feels like in not doing Medicine she will give up the thorough grounding that Medicine gives in terms of taking care of sick patients and being able to assess any situation to stabilize and treat appropriately. Since she likes procedures, I've pointed her toward GI or Cards, or even Pulm, but have warned her that although they do skilled sophisticated procedures, it's not the OR. Thanks for your thoughts.

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